Liftable shades and the cord guide means, usually pulleys, used therewith have been known for a long time and during all of this period there has necessarily been some means present for supporting such pulleys in a predetermined position with respect to the shade. This has usually been a fixed position with respect to the shade and a position wherein the plane of the pulley was parallel to the plane of the window with which the shade was used. Since the normal method of handling the shade cords would involve maintaining them at least substantially in the plane of a given shade pulley, this would mean maintaining such cords at least substantially in a plane parallel to such window. A careful operator of the shade would have no difficulty in so doing but a careless operator of the shade cords might well stand at some distance from the window, or the wall adjacent the window, and would particularly do so if there were furniture adjacent the wall. In so doing, he would angle the cords at what sometimes became a substantial angle with respect to such wall. This often caused a cord feeding toward a pulley to fail to track with respect to such pulley and either go off the pulley entirely or at least jam between the edge of the pulley and the pulley support. This has in the past been met by providing various types of guiding devices in association with the pulley in order that the cord would be fed onto the pulley in proper alignment therewith regardless of the angle at which the majority of the cords were held with respect to the adjacent wall, i.e., with respect to the plane of the pulley. This has worked with a reasonable degree of satisfaction insofar as preventing the shade cord from escaping from the pulley but such guides normally generate a substantial amount of friction and thereby make more difficult the operation of the shade. While it is recognized that this is of no great consequence with small or short shades, in the case of large shades where there is already a substantial load present, the addition of such further frictional load is highly undesirable.
This problem has long been recognized but insofar as I am aware, there has been only one previous attempt made to deal differently with it. This attempt involved hanging the pulley from a horizontal pin, in somewhat of a loop and pintle arrangement, to permit the pulley to pivot around a horizontal axis parallel with the longitudinal extent of the shade. This permitted the pulley to angle away from the wall to follow the shade cords if same were so angled in somewhat the same manner as the blocks (pulleys) often used in various positions, as on the deck, of a sailboat. This has provided a substantially improved operation but because of the use of metal components and the permanence resulting from metal fabrication, it presents certain problems in manufacturing and inventorying which it is the purpose of the present invention to solve.
Accordingly, the objects of the present invention include:
1. To provide a support for a cord guiding means, usually a pulley means, usable in association with a liftable shade, as a Roman shade or a venetian blind wherein said cord guide support is made entirely from plastics material, wherein said cord guide support comprises a hanger section and a cord guide, usually pulley, housing section and wherein the said housing section will pivot with respect to the hanger section around an axis parallel with the longitudinal extent of the shade.
2. To provide a cord guide support, as aforesaid, which can be manufactured as an independent unit or which can by a simple modification be incorporated into a shade as an integral part thereof.
3. To provide a cord guide support, as aforesaid, in which the cord guide housing section and the hanger section comprise independent parts having broad mutually engageable load bearing surfaces rather than a pivot-and-pin relationship.
4. To provide a cord guide support, as aforesaid, in which the housing section has a snap-in relationship to the hanger section but wherein the parts providing the snap-in function are independent of the load bearing areas so that the snap-in relationship is not dependent upon such parts for carrying the cord guide, as pulley, loading.
5. To provide a cord guide support, as aforesaid, in which a single hanger section design may be utilized for a plurality of cord guide support designs in order to simplify the inventorying of such components.
6. To provide a cord guide support, as aforesaid, in which the parts can be assembled by a single motion and do not require the more complicated motions normally associated with hinge and pin arrangements.
Other objects and purposes of the invention will be apparent to persons acquainted with devices of this general type upon reading the following specification and inspection of the accompanying drawings.